Suspended

by Taryn Elliott

  “I loved both of them. My father wasn’t an easy man. His empire in Hawaii was all that mattered. The N’ai name and the power behind it were his sole focus. Larry was a great guy who cooked burgers on the grill and took Shane camping. He welcomed me into the family like a…well, like a son.”

  “Sometimes family isn’t about blood,” Kendall said quietly.

  “No, it’s not. And that’s why it’s hard to see Shane like this. He’s always the serious one but never like this.”

  She’d had a feeling Shane wasn’t exactly the angry type. There were far too many laugh lines that didn’t match the somber-faced Shane she’d met today. It didn’t make sense for her to want to go upstairs and check in on him. If he wasn’t talking to his best friend, why would he talk to her—a complete stranger?

  She sighed. “I suppose you’re the charming one?”

  He grinned. “I’ve been known to be charming.” He dropped his hand to her lower back, turning her toward the island.

  She climbed onto the stool in front of her. Everything in the kitchen was outfitted for a giant. “I bet.”

  “Not interested?”

  She laughed. “If I were a smart woman, I would be.”

  He arched a brow. “You’re not?”

  Yeah, he was a pussycat. A Bengal tiger-sized pussycat but harmless. She leaned on her propped hand and couldn’t fight a giggle.

  “Good thing I have a healthy—”

  “Ego?”

  His face melted into a devastating smile. “I was going to go with sense of self-preservation. No matter how attractive you are.”

  Her heart thudded. “Thanks. I think.”

  “If Shane wasn’t in the picture, my interest would be crystal clear.” He leaned in. “Crystal.”

  “Shane and I…” What? They’d had sex. Spectacular sex, but in the end, it was just a reaction to a crazy situation. When death was involved, some people got drunk, and some people got laid.

  Shane was currently on the get-drunk portion of the night. And her formerly dormant hormones were still sizzling. That was all. “My interest is purely physical.”

  “Oh.” He blinked and crossed his arms over his chest. “Can’t say I was expecting that answer.”

  “I might be from a small town, Kain, but not the small-town sensibility. We’re both adults, and things happen.”

  His eyes went from friendly to cool. “That wouldn’t include charming my best friend out of his inheritance, would it?”

  Her eyebrows shot up, and her spine went rigid. “Of course not.” Shit. She wasn’t some femme fatale.

  “The terms of the will don’t do you any favors.”

  “No, they don’t. The will has been nothing but a nightmare, but I can’t change things.” Not when it was her own mother who had put them in this position. If her mother had just changed the deed into her name when her father gave them the house, they wouldn’t be in this mess. Her father was and would always be an opportunist. Her mother had her head in the sand, but Kendall had been just as guilty. She hadn’t protected herself or her home either. Kendall clenched her fingers.

  “Do you know what you two are going to do?”

  “No. We had to spend the last five hours figuring out the finer points of the will thanks to Jonas’s handy legalese.” Her father’s secrets and lies. Why should she expect anything else? She tried to stuff down the anger, but it didn’t want to go back into its box.

  “Now I have to share my business with a man who didn’t do any of the work, didn’t worry over it, slave over it, and give his life up to it to support the one person who gave a crap about me. No, I have to share it with a stranger. And that’s the best possible outcome. The worst? We have to sell it and split the money.” She hopped off her seat. “So don’t talk to me about charming anyone out of their inheritance.”

  “Kendall, wait.”

  “No, you wait. I got this summons to come here—from my home in New York where I wasn’t bothering anyone—to get in the middle of this drama pot? I don’t need it, Kain. I don’t need any of this.”

  “Shane lost everything too.”

  She tried to rein in her temper. “And I’m sorry for that, but at least Lawrence wanted him. He sure as hell didn’t care about me.”

  Shit.

  Kain walked around the island, and she backed up. “No. I don’t need you to feel sorry for me. I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “No, you mean you didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

  She shut her eyes against the tears. She didn’t pine for her father. Her mother had made sure she was loved, and Kendall rarely even thought of him. But this will was a blatant reminder she didn’t need. That Lawrence didn’t care enough to reach out to her except to take. Except to give another piece of her away, this time to the boy who meant more to him than she ever did. “I just need to figure all this out.”

  “Take the time and do that.”

  “We don’t really have that much time. That will locked everything up for Shane, and I need to get back to Bradley.”

  Kain plowed his fingers through his hair. “We didn’t have time to get the money straight. I didn’t even know Larry had a new will written up. I would have had everything taken care of by the end of the year. No one would have known how bad it was.”

  Pain shimmered in Kain’s fierce green eyes. Her voice gentled. “Do you think Shane would want to be in the dark about this?”

  “No.”

  She sighed and laid a hand on his ridiculously wide chest. “You really think that Shane wouldn’t have figured it out?”

  “All Larry wanted was to give Shane a way out. He didn’t want him to be burdened by the mess that Justice Construction had gotten into.”

  “And you wanted to help Shane.” The realization settled down the last of her anger. “He doesn’t seem the type to allow that.”

  Kain pinched the bridge of his nose. “You would be right.” He dropped his hand, his eyes earnest. “I could give you the money.”

  She stepped back and jammed her hands into the hoodie pockets. It would solve all her problems. She fisted her hands. For once in her life there was someone willing to help out, no questions asked. A stranger who could make all the difference in the world.

  Kain rubbed her arm. “It’s not about the money.”

  Kendall dragged her attention back to him and looked up. “Come on.”

  “Just enough to get you guys situated. Get you both to New York.”

  Her fingers relaxed. “Shane already knows I’m poor as a church mouse.” Things just weren’t ever meant to be easy. Why would this situation be any different?

  Kain turned and slammed his fist into the fridge.

  She winced. “Feel better?”

  “Fuck.” He shook his hand and flexed it carefully.

  She turned him around and pushed him onto a stool. She opened drawers near the fridge.

  “What are you looking for?”

  She found power bars, granola bars, and trail mix. In another, she found what had to be his junk drawer. “Baggie? Towel? Something for ice?”

  “There’s a gel pack in the freezer.”

  “Ah.” She opened the bottom drawer of the huge refrigerator and spotted the blue pack, pulled it out, and slapped it on his swelling hand.

  “Ow.”

  “Don’t be a baby.”

  He winced. “You’re something else.”

  “That’s what they tell me.” She turned back to the freezer and took out the pint of ice cream she’d seen.

  “Hey. Crappy Florence Nightingale routine I can forgive. Stealing my Cherry Garcia? That’s a no.”

  “Spoons?”

  He sighed. “Drawer behind you.”

  “Got it.” She hip-checked the drawer shut, then popped the lid on the pint and handed him a spoon. “I just said no to money. I deserve ice cream.”

  “You don’t have to say no.”

  “Yeah.” She dug in and carved out a dense spoonful of the pink confect
ion of perfection. “I do.”

  He plunged his spoon into the hole she’d made. “What is it with you two?”

  She shrugged. “Did you take a handout to get where you are?”

  He met her gaze and squinted. “I see what you did there.”

  Kendall grinned around a mouthful of cherry goodness.

  “I just want to help.”

  “I know, and I’m sure Shane appreciates it when he’s not being grouchy. So he’s really not this bitchy all the time?”

  “Oh, no, he’s plenty bitchy.”

  Laughing, she sat back, then swallowed another bite. “Good to know.”

  “But he’s a good guy. Just too serious sometimes. And now if you guys move to New York, who’s going to be around to keep him in beer and pretzels? Who’s going to drag him out of his workshop and make him watch a ball game?”

  She twisted the spoon in her mouth and licked the bowl of the spoon clean. “You’re going to miss him.”

  He made a production of scraping the inside of the carton. “Yeah, I’m going to miss the grouch.”

  “And I gather from earlier that Shane doesn’t want you to be a backer for a shop of his own?”

  “Yep.”

  So he was going to be her problem. And somehow she had to convince Shane that selling the Heron wasn’t an option. Oh, and figure out what to do with the overwhelming attraction between them at the same time.

  No big deal.

  “All we have is each other right now,” she said quietly.

  “That’s true. Are you sure you want to add sex into the mix? Never mind. By the look on your face, I just answered my own question.”

  What? Was she wearing an “I had sex” T-shirt or something? “Look, I appreciate that Shane’s got someone like you in his corner, but in the end we’ve only got each other to figure this out.”

  “Tomorrow is soon enough for that. It’s nearly ten, and you’re on East Coast time.”

  One a.m. was well past her bedtime. “I’m sorry we ended up crashing here.”

  “That’s fine. You can crash in my sister’s room.”

  She nodded. Maybe with some sleep she could actually make an intelligent decision in the morning. “Let me help you clean up.”

  He shook his head. “Go on up. I have a few more hours of work to do, and I can do that down here.”

  She sighed and climbed the stairs. The house was silent. The carpeting muffled her footfalls as she reached the landing. The first room’s door was cracked open, but the lights were off. The dull scrape of glass over wood made her pause. She could hear the low crash of surf from an open window.

  She pushed the door a little wider. “Shane?”

  Her eyes adjusted to the dim light. An ivory panel fluttered around the sliding door. There was just enough moonlight to show the half-empty bottle and heavy tumbler with a shot’s worth of amber liquor inside sitting on the desk. She moved into the room, then closed the door behind her.

  “Sure you want to do that, babe?”

  The husky tone of his voice didn’t sound slurred, but the insolent babe brought that firefly back to life in her chest. She followed his voice out the door and gripped the doorjamb, stepping back into the room. The balcony was glass and steel like the rest of the house. The ocean roared beneath them as the tide battered the rocks spitting spray into the night. Moonlight shimmered across the breakers—wild and beautiful like the man who leaned against the railing. Dress pants hung low along his tapered waist, and his dress shirt was long gone.

  “Shane, why don’t you come inside?”

  “Why don’t you come out here?”

  Everything inside her wanted to move closer, to touch the smooth expanse of his back and feel those muscles bunch and glide under her fingertips again.

  He looked over his shoulder, his eyes glittering in the dark. “You want another fuck, Miss New York?” His voice rumbled, barely rising over the crashing waves.

  Her nails bit into her palm. “You’re an asshole.”

  His wide hands flexed around the steel railing. The muscles of his shoulders rippled under the strain. “I’ve been an asshole since you met me, babe. Didn’t stop you from climbing on me before.”

  No, it hadn’t. Hell, it had ramped up the lust. Not that she’d tell him that. She took a deep breath and stepped out onto the glass platform. She swallowed against the quick shock of vertigo. Cool air whipped her hair around her face. “Are you just going to sulk in the dark?”

  He shrugged and looked back out at the water. “Not bothering anyone. But I don’t think you came in here to check on me for that, now, did you?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  He turned and crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned his hip against the glass. “You closed the door.”

  How the hell could he know that? “What? Do you have the ears of a bat?”

  He didn’t answer her, just pushed off the rail toward her. “Worried about me?”

  She straightened her shoulders. “If you pitch yourself off the balcony, then the Heron is mine free and clear.”

  His teeth flashed. “Is that right?” She took a step back as he closed the distance. He caught her wrist. “Running?”

  She wasn’t sure if it was the roar of the sea or her heart rate in her ears as he wrapped his long fingers around her pulse point. “I don’t need to run.”

  “You don’t want to run. There’s a difference.” He drew her wrist behind her back until she went up on her toes and her breasts grazed his chest. The dark thrill zinged through her, tightening her nipples to aching points. The sharp tang of whiskey burned her nose. He brushed his lips along her jaw and nipped at her ear. “I’m tired of being numb. When I’m inside you, I can feel again.”

  She shivered. She understood the numbness now. When she was busy, she didn’t think about her empty bed. She was too glad to see it at the end of the day to want to do anything more than sleep. One touch from Shane and sleeping was the last thing on her mind. She should be exhausted, but her body was so keyed up she could only think about getting him over her or under her.

  He brought his mouth to hers, hovering just out of her reach. “Is this what you want?”

  She nodded. The heat of his breath against her lips stalled her ability to speak.

  He jerked her hoodie over her shoulders and down her arms, but instead of dropping it to the floor, he trapped her hands and brought the zipper up to lock her arms behind her. His touch was gone. She had room to move—to a point. “I watched your face this afternoon when I held your arms behind you. You liked it.”

  She gasped. She wasn’t sure if she liked it. She wanted to touch, wanted to feel the warmth of his skin under her hands. But with her shoulders pinned back, her breasts were on display. The cool night air streaked through the thin tank she wore. He nosed down a strap, leaving only the stretchy lace of her bra as a shield. His breath was hot and moist, but he didn’t touch her. Didn’t taste her.

  “Is this what you want?”

  She nodded again and groaned when he pulled away.

  “I need to hear you say it, Kendall.”

  She closed her eyes. “Yes. Yes, I want this.”

  “Like this?” He circled her nipple through the lace. Needing to see what he was doing, she opened her eyes. His eyes glittered in the diffused light as he used the second knuckle of his finger to go first clockwise, then counterclockwise around her tight nipple. “Will you let me touch you? Will you let me make you come?”

  She pressed closer. “Yes.”

  He stepped back, and she hissed. Goose bumps raced over her skin without his warmth. He drew down both the straps of her tank and bra until they became another binding. He cupped her breasts. “So small and perfect.” He lowered his head, then used the flat of his tongue to swipe under one nipple before fastening his lips around it and flicking with his tongue. Her ribs expanded as she sucked in a deep breath. With his thumb and forefinger he tugged at the other, drawing the tip away from her bre
ast before releasing it. Again and again the pressure increased with each pull. She jerked at her bonds. There was just enough tension to hold, but she could still slip free. Instead she linked her fingers and fell into the swamping pleasure.

  The suction from his mouth made her skin tingle. Her head spun. He released her with a pop, letting the air hit her wet nipple. He switched to her other breast. The fingers that had been ruthlessly plucking her nipple gripped her hip instead. He drew so hard that her nipple throbbed like a heartbeat. He flicked his thumb under the first one he’d paid attention to, and she cried out.

  He straightened and cradled both breasts, grazing her nipples with the pads of his thumbs as he trailed the tip of his tongue up to her clavicle, tracing the dip there, then along the column of her throat. All the while, his endless metronome of a touch brought her nipples to such sensitive peaks she could barely breathe. He nipped her chin and finally caught her mouth. He opened her wide, stroking his tongue along hers.

  His kiss was a soft meeting of mouths, back and forth until she had to shift her thighs apart just to stay upright. How could a touch be so caring and so ruthless? She could taste the whiskey and the heat of him as she ticked up another level of want. Her thighs quivered, and then the gentle swipes turned to sharp pulls on each nipple. She heard her keening cry but didn’t care. All she could do was chase the pleasure.

  The static Shane was gone. One hand slipped under her pants and into her panties. His groan against her throat echoed her own. “Fuck. So wet.” He knuckled into her slick folds and circled the tight bead of her clit.

  She shuddered, and her head fell back. His chest was a wall of heat against her swollen nipples. He pinched her clit in a firm grasp between two knuckles until she moaned his name. When he released the sensitive flesh and started circling again, she shuddered. Restless and on the verge, she rolled her hips in time with his touch.

  His other hand gripped her ass. “Christ, Kendall.”

  She couldn’t think. The riot of emotions rattled her. She rubbed her chest against his, and her hips jerked with each swipe of his knuckles. With his mouth back at her breasts, she stumbled. Who knew she used her arms for balance so much? She twisted her arms to free herself. He stopped, staring up at her.